


Something There

by SegaBarrett



Category: Beauty and the Beast (2017)
Genre: F/M, Falling In Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-13
Updated: 2017-06-13
Packaged: 2018-11-13 13:51:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11186460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: A slow realization in an unlikely place.





	Something There

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sumi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sumi/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I don't own Beauty and the Beast, and I make no money from this.

This wasn’t how she thought love was going to be.

That was an odd thought in and of itself. How was love “supposed” to be, and who was she “supposed” to fall in love with?

If that was what this was, which she wasn’t sure it was. 

Maybe it was the way that she’d trapped village cats and got them to eventually like being indoors. For their own good, she would tell her father, and he would laugh. He hadn’t liked cats, but he loved Belle – and so they had had an endless supply of them over the last eighteen years. 

Maybe in a way she had always been good with beasts. But it was hard to think of small, gentle furry creatures in that way.

The huge, hulking thing she had been living with for the past three weeks, on the other hand? What word could she use to describe it?

She tried to think about how one of her books would describe it, how one of her fairy tales would figure him out. Would he be akin to the witch who tried to cook Hansel and Gretel, or the Big Bad Wolf would be more likely, perhaps?

He was certainly furry, if not a teddy bear, more of a matted bear rug.

Even as she thought about it, however, there was a strange fondness in it that she couldn’t quite figure out. Maybe it was just a result of being stuck in this place for too long; maybe she had gotten used to it, just as she had gotten used to living in that poor provincial town filled with people who didn’t understand her and didn’t want to understand.

They were sitting together, side by side, silently, just looking out the largest window. Just thinking, reflecting. Belle was sure that if she craned her head just right, she could catch a tiny glimpse of the town.

And all of its little, tiny, bustling people.

“What are you thinking about?” the Beast asked, and Belle had to think, again, for a long moment before replying. 

“Just… about home. About where I used to live.”

“What was it like?”

She let out a small sigh. What was he asking her for? Just to taunt her, because she was going to be trapped in this place for the rest of her life? Because she had agreed to it? 

“It was… small.”

There was a long pause, and the Beast didn’t say much of anything in response. She figured that was her cue to continue, that maybe he wanted to know more.

“Small and…. Well, kind of cozy, sometimes, I guess. But it could be dark, too. The people there…” She paused, thinking of the way Gaston had looked at her, as if he wanted to claim her as a hunting prize. She could only picture it – locked up there, too, but locked up in plain view so everyone could see how the haughty had fallen.

Somehow she always ended up locked up. 

“The people there…?” the Beast prompted, and Belle looked at him with a shy smile. At least he was listening.

“The people there don’t understand a lot of things.” 

“I want to understand.”

And Belle wanted him to.

***

The Beast – he hadn’t been Adam for a long time, now, barely remembered the name – sat on the bed and let out a long, drawn-out sigh.  
The girl was beautiful. Belle – an interesting name. A peculiar one, and a peculiar girl at that. It wasn’t as if he had seen many girls, of course, other than his servants. Before he had been transformed, he hadn’t taken much notice of them, or of anyone really. He had closed off his heart, his mind – he had not allowed himself to feel. He had become a beast in his heart before it had shown on the outside.

And because of that, there were days when he couldn’t even be mad about any of it. Maybe he would have done it to him too, had he been someone else.

He didn’t know – all he knew was that he was running out of time, and fast. He wished he could slow it all down, could have time to figure it all out. 

There were things that he noticed about her, couldn’t help but notice about her. She was beautiful – whatever that word actually meant. He had once only thought that objects could be beautiful, objects that one had to attain to be… to be someone. To be the level that one was supposed to be when the world called them a “prince”.

He had not felt like a prince in a very long time, and he felt much more like a beast than he ever had a prince, to begin with. It was a paradox in every way.

Maybe there was a justification to all of it; it certainly seemed as if the enchantress had seen inside him and figured out what would turn him inside out, what would drive him insane. 

Maybe that was the plan. Maybe he was never meant to find love at all. Maybe the idea was to stare into his mirror until his own reflection drove him mad, and then he would curse his choice until the last day of his miserable life.

And then Belle had come along, and maybe everything had changed; there was a new possibility that the Enchantress couldn’t have predicted. A silver lining that he never would have even seen if he had carried on the way he’d been doing.

But maybe she was just out of his reach, a vine he couldn’t quite touch.

Maybe in the end he was meant to die a beast.

***

It was funny in a way; her bed at the castle was so much warmer than the one at her house back in town, but it didn’t matter because the place was always so cold. There was a chill that began at the ceiling and worked its way down the walls, not stopping until it hit Belle’s spine.

Usually, at least. 

Sometimes there was that strange, warm feeling that she didn’t know how to describe. Maybe it was because this place, this castle, was closing in on her and suffocating her.

She didn’t want to care about him. She didn’t want to care what happened to him, to wonder about how he got this way. She wanted to shut off her heart and keep moving forward, figuring out what oblivion felt like. What it felt like to be at the end of your life but to keep living it over and over, until time ended. Because this place was certainly, somehow, frozen in time.

And he was frozen there, too. Trapped in the past, the same way she was.

She was surprised to find that thought made her feel a little less alone.

***

He was up all night pacing and scratching his claws against the floors, those floors that had been perfectly polished once upon a time, now covered in scrapes and scratches and tears, the way his father had pounded his boots against the ground and made his mother cry – always in a temper, he’d been, arrogant and frustrated and bitter his entire life.

He had become the same man, the man who made women afraid, who made his servants afraid. Who stayed in the shadows.

When had he become that man? How could he ever dream of something past this?

Maybe he was only becoming what he had always been.

Maybe inside it was easier to always stay the beast; maybe he should just let the last petal fall.

But when he closed his eyes, he saw the girl – saw Belle – behind his eyes and in his dreams; he wasn’t sure what that meant. Maybe… maybe he liked that.

***

She let her hand brush against his and didn’t pull away. Their fingers intertwined, and neither of them spoke – not yet. Maybe that was the secret, Belle thought, in novels people spent a lot of time staring at one another and thinking about deep things in their life. Somehow, in those stories, everyone seemed to know what the other person was thinking. 

If only that was how it was in real life. If you could look into someone’s eyes and tell what their truth was, underneath everything. 

“What’s your real name?” Belle asked quietly.

“Adam,” he told her, not Prince Adam, not the royal name. Just him.

She let her hand brush against his, and she let her eyes meet his for a long while.

And maybe, just maybe, there was something there.


End file.
